Commencement Address at Milton Academy

Marian Wright Edelman (June 10, 1983)

In 1983, Marian Wright Edelman spoke1 at the elite Milton Academy in
Massachusetts to the graduating class, urging them to take action
against the injustices of a society that has money for B-2 bombers
and tax breaks for rich corporations but not for health care, not for
education, and not for programs to combat poverty. Edelman, a
graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, became the first
black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She directed the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi,
and later worked as a counsel for the Poor People's March. In 1973,
Edelman founded the Children's Defense Fund.

From Voices of A People's History, edited by Zinn and Arnove

Where is the human commitment and political will to find the relative
pittance of money needed to protect children? What kind of world
allows 40,000 children to die needlessly every day? UNICEF estimates
that for $6 billion a year we could save 20,000 children a day
by 1990 by applying new scientific and technological breakthroughs in
oral rehydration therapy, universal child immunization, promotion of
breastfeeding, and mass use of child growth charts. At home, where
are the strong political voices speaking out for investing in
children rather than bombs; mothers rather than missiles?

In
1953 Dwight David Eisenhower warned:

Every gun that is
made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies ... a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and
are not clothed.

This world in arms
is not spending money alone.

It is spending the
sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children.

And
how blatant the world and national theft from needy children and the
solution of pressing human needs is.

In
its first year, the Reagan Administration proposed $11 billion in
cuts in preventive children's and lifeline support programs for poor
families with no attempt to distinguish between programs that work
and don't work. The Congress enacted $9 billion in cuts.

In
its second year, the Reagan Administration proposed $9 billion
in cuts in these same programs; the Congress enacted $1 billion.

In
its child year, the President is proposing $3.5 billion in new cuts
in these same programs just as the effects of the previous cuts are
being felt and millions of Americans are beset by joblessness,
homelessness, and lost health insurance. Thousands of children face
increasing child abuse, foster care placement, illness, and mortality
because their families are unable to meet their needs while safety
net family support, health and social services programs are being
drastically cut back.

It
is my strong view that the American people have been sold a set of
false choices by our national leaders who cell us we must choose
between jobs and peace; between filling potholes in our streets and
cavities in our children's teeth; between day care for five million
latchkey children and home care for millions of senior citizens
living out their lives in the loneliness of a nursing home; between
arms control and building the MX [missile]. There are other
choices—fairer choices—that you and I must insist our
political leaders make.

While
slashing programs serving the neediest children, the President and
Congress found $750 billion to give untargeted tax cuts mostly to
non-needy corporations and individuals. And the Reagan Administration
is crying to convince the American people to give the Pentagon $2
trillion over a seven year period in the largest arms buildup in
peacetime history. Do you know how much money $2 trillion is? If you
had spent $2 million a day every day since Christ was born, you would
still have spent less than President Reagan wants the American people
to believe the Pentagon can spend efficiently in seven years.

When President Reagan took office, we were spending $18 million an hour on
defense.

This year, we are spending $24 million an hour.

Next
year, President Reagan wanes to spend $28 million an hour. The House
Democratic leadership wanes to spend "only" $27 million an
hour and they are being labeled "soft" on defense.

By
1988, if the President had his way, we would be spending $44 million
an hour on defense and every American would be spending 63 percent
more on defense and 22 percent less on poor children and poor
families. Just one hour's worth of President Reagan's proposed
defense increase this year in military spending would pay for free
school lunches for 19,000 children for a school year. A day's
worth of his proposed defense increase would pay for a year's free
school lunches for almost a half a million low income students. A
week's worth of his proposed defense spending could buy a fully
equipped micro computer for every classroom of low income children of
school age in the U.S., assuming 25 children to a classroom.

How
do you want to spend scarce national resources? What choices would
you make in the following examples:

• Would
you rather build one less of the planned 226 MX missiles that will
cost us $110 million each, and that we still can't find a place to
hide, or eliminate poverty in 101,000 female headed households a
year? If we cancel the whole MX program we could eliminate poverty
for all 12 million poor children and have enough left over to pay
college costs for 300,000 potential engineers, mathematicians, and
scientists who may not be able to afford college. Which investment do
you think will foster longer term national security? President Reagan
has cut safety net programs for poor families. He's building the MX
missiles.

• Would
you rather spend $100 million a year on 100 military bands or put
that money into teaching 200,000 educationally deprived children to
read and write as well as their more advantaged peers? American high
school bands would be delighted to volunteer to provide music for
patriotic events, I'll bet. President Reagan has cut compensatory
education. He's not touched military bands.

• Would
you rather keep or sell the luxury hotel the Department of Defense
owns at Fort Dean Russey on Waikiki Beach which has a fair market
value of $100 million, or provide Medicaid coverage for all poor
pregnant women, some of whom are being turned away from hospital
emergency rooms in labor? President Reagan has cut Medicaid. No one
has seriously suggested curbing military luxuries like this hotel.

• We
plan to build 100 B-1 bombers at a cost of $250 million each. If we
build 91—nine fewer—we could finance Medicaid for all
poor pregnant women and children living below the poverty level. Do
you think this will threaten our national security?

• Whose
hunger would you rather quench? Secretary Weinberger's or a poor
child in child care? Every time Secretary [of Defense Caspar]
Weinberger and his elite colleagues sit down in his private Pentagon
dining room staffed by 19, they pay $2.87 a meal and we taxpayers pay
$ 12.06. This $12.06 could provide 40 mid-morning milk and juice and
cracker snacks President Reagan has forced poor children of working
mothers in child care centers to give up. I think we should urge
Secretary Weinberger to eat in one of the four other Pentagon
executive dining rooms and give one million food supplements back to
poor children instead.

Just
as I believe we ought to weigh military nonessentials against
civilian essentials—and apply the same standards of national
purpose, efficiency and effectiveness to military programs as we do
to domestic ones—I also believe that the non-needy should bear
a fair portion of the burden of economic recovery. They have not....

As
you go out into the world, try to keep your eye on the human bottom
line. I also hope you will understand and be tough about what is
needed to solve problems, change attitudes, and bring about needed
changes in our society. Democracy is not a spectator sport.